Email Newsletters

Communication between department staff and faculty/students are often through email. If you want to improve how your emails look and ensure they are being received, HumTech offers assistance designing and developing HTML email newsletters using an online service called MailChimp. Features include the following:

• Email Templates
  Utilizing your departments branding, we create a mobile-friendly email template that can be used for general announcements, latest news, and events. Additional email templates can be created as needed. A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor makes our templates easy to use.
• Email Delivery
  Using MailChimp’s delivery service you can create and send emails as needed or have emails automatically sent at a fixed interval by pulling news and events from your department website.
• Mailing List Management
  MailChimp provides an alternative to UCLA’s Google Groups mailing list that allows departments to offer their audience the ability to signup and opt-out of newsletters themselves. MailChimp’s list management solution also automatically takes care of email bounces (emails sent to inactive email accounts), lets you see data on if your emails are being read, and generally makes management easier.

How to Request

Interested in setting up a newsletter for your department? Start by emailing WebOps at webops@humnet.ucla.edu. We’ll schedule a meeting to get a better understanding of your needs and how to best implement a newsletter for your department.

Limitations

• MailChimp limits free accounts to sending no more than 10,000 emails per month (1 newsletter sent to 50 people is considered 50 emails), and mailing list are limited to 2000 subscribers. If your account exceeds those limits, a hold will be automatically placed on your account and you will no longer be able to send emails until you resolve the issue. Alternatively, you can pay for an upgrade to your account. Visit MailChimp’s pricing page for more information.
• You are encouraged to use MailChimp for both creating and sending out emails, but you don’t have to. Instead you can either send newsletter from MailChimp to yourself and then forward it others, or we can provide you with an HTML template you can edit and send through Outlook. The latter option requires an understanding of HTML. Your emails will not be mobile-friendly with either options.
• Because of anti-spam laws, emails sent from MailChimp must have an unsubscribe link. Aside from this helping to prevent your emails for being flagged as spam, it also makes for a better user experience.